Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Megan Moran pours two beers for a
Tuesday night crowd at Silver City Restaurant and Brewery.

Brothers Scott and Steve Houmes, sons and grandsons of
restaurateurs and former owners of Top Notch Burger restaurants in
Bremerton and Silverdale, opened Silver City Restaurant and Brewery
in 1996. Last year, Silver City opened its Bremerton brewery to
expand its beer-production capacity and increase restaurant seating
in the space formerly occupied by brewing operations.

As part of my work on Kitsap Sun’s upcoming restaurant guide
(due out in October), I interviewed co-owner Scott Houmes. A
portion of the Q&A will appear in the guide, but Food Life
readers get the full, uncut version. Well, uncut except for the
parts where I didn’t type nearly fast enough (or forgot to type as
I listened) and consequently portions of the conversation were
omitted.

How did you and your brother decide to start a
brewery?
We decided it was a good fit for Kitsap County. It’s something that
we had a passion for as far as the food industry and great craft
beer. We thought at that time that Kitsap County was ready for
it.

How did you meet brewmaster Don Spencer?
We went on a recruiting trip for a brewmaster. We knew that
brewmasters were kind of a brotherhood, so we took a tour of Thomas
Kemper [which formerly brewed in Poulsbo]. We wanted to meet a
brewer and put the word out there. In 1996, they didn’t have
Monster.com or any of those things, so we were doing it the old
fashioned way. … We took a tour with Don Spencer and after the
tour, we took him aside and said this is what we were doing and if
you know anyone, spread the word. Luckily, Don didn’t tell anybody
and we ended up hiring him shortly after that. Being a brewmaster
is a pretty coveted position. He was able to come in and create his
own recipes and styles and brew what he wanted to brew and brew
what Kitsap County would like.

About 50 additional seats have been
placed in the area formerly occupied by the brewing operation.

How’s business?
Good. We have a good following. We just finished an expansion that
we’ve been working on for the past eight to 10 months. Our business
grew and grew every year since we opened in ’96. In the past five
years, we’d have a waiting a line at the door every week, and we
knew we needed space for more guests and our beer was becoming more
and more popular so we took the brewing operations from the site…
We have a production brewing facility down in in Bremerton and
we’re now distributing our beer throughout Western Washington. We
were able to open 50 more seats for our guests and eliminate the
wait for our tables.

After 15 years, you still have steady business and a
social media following most local businesses could envy. What do
you think has kept Silver City so popular?
I think being a brewpub or this style of restaurant and brewery
lends itself to having more of a neighborhood feel, a place that
the community can call their own. The beer is brewed in the area …
a lot of people have learned about craft beer through Silver City.
It’s not just part of another chain. It’s a locally owned place
that they can feel good about, that’s the first thing. And No. 2,
we have a great staff with a great level of service, second to none
and we offer a great selection of food that you can come and eat in
any attire … with flip-flops or a tie.

You moved brewing operations to Bremerton and expanded
the restaurant in the vacated vat space, how have the changes
gone?
It’s gone over great. It’s given the operation a lot more space for
the guests. The wait time has been reduced and it’s expanded our
brewing capacity. We’re able to produce more seasonal beers on a
consistent basis, give more variety for our gusts and it gives a
better flow for the restaurant. One of the main things our guests
would always comment on was a long wait for a table and it was
cramped quarters in there. …Having people hungry and standing in
line for 45 minutes is not something anybody wants to do.

When are you going to open a tasting room at the
brewery?
That’s a good question. With the growth of the distribution
business, it’s kept me on my toes. We’ve darn near tripled our
production from what we had four years ago, so we’ve been busy with
that and busy with remodeling the restaurant… The type of business
we can open up down here is limited because of lack of parking in
our industrial area. You can’t open a 50- to 60-seat restaurant
with 15 parking spaces, so it will be something more like a tap
room with a lack of food. If we can’t get them someplace to park,
they won’t come.

The biggest excuse is: it’s been a matter of time. We have had
it open for keg sales and bottle sales out of the brewer since the
first of January. We sell between 20 and 30 kegs a weekend.

People can go down there and pick it up?
They can call ahead and order and we make sure its ready nine times
out of 10 for the weekend.

What beers do you have under development?
As in new? We have our year-round beers, our most popular being
Ridgetop Red and the Fat Scotch Ale, our Indianola Pale Ale, the
Panther Lake Porter and our Bavarian Hefeweizen and Whoop Pass
IPA.

We also have beers that we like to have our seasonal beer
rotation and right now, we have our Oktoberfest … We’re one of the
few that brew a traditional Oktoberfest lager. Our next seasonal
lager will be our winter bock, which we’re very excited about.

When will (the winter bock) be out?
That will be out the beginning of November.

Is this the first year for the winter bock?
We brewed it on an annual basis at the brewpub, but now as far as
distribution, this will be our first year.

Our seasonal beer this summer was a Ziggy Zoggy and it was very
successful. It’s a great summer, easy-drinking beer with some honey
notes to it much like a summer pilsner but very sessionable. … I
don’t know if you’ll find that in the dictionary. What we mean is
that you can drink them in succession.

Tell me about menu changes over the years.
Basically the guests have helped determine our menu over the years.
We re-order the fresh sheet on a rotating basis. We bring out new
items on the fresh sheet, an appetizer, several entrees and a
dessert. They coincide with the season. For the fall, we have
bratwurst and schnitzel. In the wintertime, you’re going to have
more of hearty dish and such. With those items, depending on
how well they’re received and how well they sell determines what
goes on the menu in the future.

We can’t just keep adding to the menu, though, to keep the flow
of the kitchen and the restaurant. … Some restaurants just have a
huge menu, and order to do what we do, we keep the food fresh. We
just can’t offer a million different items. … Something like
a schnitzel, where it would be very popular, it won’t go on the
menu because its a fun thing to have every season. It’s nice to
change to the menu, but it’s also hard because people get in the
habit of having their favorite item. … You have to make those tough
decisions.

How do you decide which new beers to
introduce?
They’re all inspired by Don Spencer, our brewmaster. … Throughout
the years, we’ve had up to 40 different styles. We have a small
brewery here called our pilot brewery where we can brew two kegs of
beer at a time, so it can start in that fashion, and we’ll put that
beer on at the pub and see how it’s received. If the brew is
successful, it would evolve into a pub series beer that’s mainly
for the pub. We’ll brew 20 barrels, that’s 40 kegs, and that wil be
on at the pub for four weeks or so. Based on the success of the
beer, not only the sales but how it fits our lineup, will determine
that.

Some beers will be seasonal, but like the restaurant menu, you
can only have so many brews year-round. Our brewery is getting
larger, but it’s not that large.

Do you home brew beer?
No, my brother and I are restaurateurs. Since we opened the new
facility, I’m more of an overseer of the brewing operations and
brewing distribution and he’s more of an overseer of the
restaurant. We come from a family of restaurant owners. Both my
grandfather and father were in the business. My grandfather started
a chain called Kings Table and my father joined it in late ’60s,
early ’70s. They were part of growing it all along the West
Coast.

What’s your favorite beer and food pairing?
My favorite, let’s see here. I would have to say my favorite
pairing is a Ridgetop Red with our firecracker wings because a red
is nice and sweet with nice caramel notes, and not overpowering,
and the firecracker wings have a spicy ginger and garlic to it.
Most wings are just spicy, but with ginger and garlic to our wings,
its very unique. The spiciness slows me down so i don’t eat too
much.

Tell me about the best beer you’ve ever had and why it
was so memorable.
That’s a tough question … I’ve come to appreciate every beer for
its own style. I used to be a real hop-head and say nothing was
good unless it was an IPA or Double IPA, but the longer I’m in this
business, the more I appreciate the number of styles there are and
the number of flavors there are. My next favorite beer is the beer
I haven’t had yet, and I’m going to ponder over.

What’s next for Silver City?
A lot of people have encouraged us to grow over the years. They
say, ‘Open a restaurant in my town’ up and down the Kitsap
Peninsula down to Gig Harbor and up to Port Townsend and Sequim.
Growing up in this business. … What it takes is time away from our
family and time away from a lot of our restaurants and it turns
into a big battle. This business is hard enough as it is with one
restaurant and one brewery. … We’re more content with ensuring our
business in Bremerton and Silverdale do what we say we’re going to
do as far as having great operations, great food and great beer
rather than grow it and expand operations. We’re planning on making
Silver City as good as it’s ever been if not better.

Events

This weekend marks the seventh annual Seattle Cheese Festival
at Pike Place Market. It includes cooking demonstrations, a little
Mozzerella making and, of course, some cheese tasting. The event
runs from 10 a.m .to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday with cheese tasting
in the market’s main thoroughfare and demonstrations nearby.

Chowder lovers can get their fix at the 15th annual Seattle
Waterfront Chowder Cookoff. For $5, you get taste-tests at nine
establishments along the waterfront, (yes, including Ivar’s).
Tasting goes from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Also on the waterfront will be the Seattle Luxury Chocolte
Salon, which runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Bell
Harbor International Conference Center.

For those who are in love with some of the new flavors
traveling around cities on four wheels, Elliott Bay Books and
Richard Hugo House on Saturday from noon to 2 p.m. will co-host
several food trucks as part of a meet-and-greet
for food author Heather Shouse, who recently wrote “Food Trucks;
Dispatches and Recipes from the Best Kitchens on Wheels.” The
trucks — Maximus Minimus, Skillet, and Hallava Faladel — will be at
the Hugo House parking lot at 1634 Eleventh Avenue

Longest Book Wait?

Foodies may have heard that the Seattle library wait for
“Modernist Cuisine” was
long. At a cost of nearly $500 ($461 on Amazon.com) the five-volume
compilation of photos, recipes and modern cooking techniques, few
beyond wealthy foodies or serious chefs can afford to purchase the
buzzworthy set. But it appears the wait is more than just long. It
is a decade long,
according to Seattle Eater. I have no idea what the longest
wait time is for any book (Google was little help), but 10 years
has to be close, right?

As a local note for those of us in Kitsap, though the local
libraries do have a long list of cookbooks, Modernist Cuisine is
not among them because of the high cost ($625 for the library) and
its weight (46.3 pounds) makes it impractical, according to the
library’s nonfiction materials selector.

History of Food Blogs

Check Please

According to Slate.com, a Palo Alto,
Calif. company has created a tablet to let you order and pay for
your meal. The company is targeting chain-style restaurants, the
not-so-fancy but better-than-fast-food type.. The story
describes it thus:

“The Presto aspires to be the food-services version of the
airline check-in kiosk or the ATM or the self-checkout at your
local pharmacy. It makes a person’s job a computer’s job, and that
cuts costs. Each console goes for $100 per month. If a restaurant
serves meals eight hours a day, seven days a week, it works out to
42 cents per hour per table—making the Presto cheaper than even the
very cheapest waiter.”

While I can understand that the usually low-profit restaurant
market could benefit from a boost in profits, and while I can admit
to the occasional annoyance of servers with one too many pieces of
flair, I’m not so sure about this idea. Can the app really be smart
enough to let me ask for my dressing on the side? Who will answer
all my mundane questions? So, I’ll wait and see.

Oyster Wine

It seems I’m not the only one with
shellfish on the brain lately. Edible Seattle recently wrote up
a piece on the annual search for wines to pair with oysters.
The winners of the Pacific Coast Oyster Wine Competition, sponsored
by Taylor Shellfish Farm also were
posted. And I should also mention that Seattle Weekly’s food
writer Hanna Raskin was also there with the harvesting group on
Sunday. Read her take on it at
seattleweekly.com.

One-night Restaurant Stands

The Associate Press
wrote recently about the trend of pop-up restaurants, places
that open for short periods, sometimes only a night, as chefs test
new dishes or new markets. While the phenomenon has been written
about before, the first four sentences of the story show that it’s
not limited to New York and Los Angeles:

Shophouse creator Wiley Frank spends most nights as sous chef at
an upscale restaurant called Lark. But once a week, Frank and his
wife transform a nearby bar called Licorous into a short-lived
eatery dedicated to simple, authentic Thai street food.”

Greens and Local Cookbook

Brandy Williams, over at the always busy Kitsap Cuisine blog
recently went to the Stillwaters Environmental Education Center’s
annual Ecofest and reports, in addition to other things going on
there, they also have a
cookbook with things like deviled beats. She also is apparently
taking advantage of the greens newly available from local farmers
markets and offers
tips on braising them.

Quick Lunch Fix

Coveted Knives

Seattle Food Geek recently went to Olympia to meet master
bladesmith Bob Kramer and explains
in a blog post a little about the process and made
this video of Kramer at work:

History of Tequila

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, which seems to give American writers
an excuse to write about anything having to do with Mexico or
Mexican food, Salon.com has an article by Felisa Rogers of The
Evergreen State College. She takes an historical
look at tequila from early trade through the invention of the
margarita.

Mother’s Day

Just a reminder that Sunday is Mother’s Day, so if you can be
with your mother, take her out to brunch or
cook up your own brunch and let her know how special she
is.

We
had spent nearly two hours on the beach plucking oysters from
their sandy clusters and filling our buckets with 40 clams each as
part of a Bainbridge Island Metro Parks and Rec outdoors
program on shellfish foraging.

As some of us were starting to show the first faint blushes of a
sunburn, we gathered our gear and our buckets and slogged our way
back up the tide flats. A few of us barely missed losing our boots
to the sucking sand beneath.

Once back at Dosewallips State Park, we set out to replenish
those calories spent digging and harvesting.

The shellfish we’d harvested were set aside as they filtered
through fresh seawater and spit out their grit. (They ideally do
this for about 24 hours before cooking).

John Adams, manager of Taylor’s Dosewallips property, brought
along iced buckets of ready oysters and showed us how to shuck
them. On a towel, he set an oyster cup-side down and wiggled the
blade of an oyster knife into the hinge at the pointed end, turned
it and popped the shell open. He then swiped the blade under the
flat side of the shell to unstick the meat.

Here’s my bad cellphone video of the process:

Many of us practiced shucking then eating the oysters raw,
dressed with either a squeeze of lime or a mignonette as described
by Langdon Cook, author of Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st
Century Forager.

The mignonette consisted of diced shallots, pepper, lemon zest
and champagne vinegar all shaken in a baby jar and spooned onto an
awaiting oyster.

Meanwhile, Cook had set others to chopping onions, garlic and
herbs to be used on two recipes for steamed clams. As onions
softened in pools of hot oil in pan set over camp stoves, people
commented on just how hungry they were.

The first batch of clams were cooked with the aforementioned
onions, Italian sausage, tomatoes, wine and herbs. Cook has the
recipe
on his blog.

The second recipe, which also
is on Cook’s blog started with butter, onions, garlic,
thin-sliced fen, wine, herbs and cream.

We filled our bowls and dunked slices of baguettes in to soak up
the juices. But even as our bellies filled with the bounty, Adams
had yet another addition to the meal. He had set several dozen
oysters onto a charcoal-heated barbecue and covered them with
foil.

As we finished the clams, these roasted oysters were just
finishing. He popped the mollusks open, then squeezed over them the
juice of key limes.

At the end of the day, with sun shining and images of eagles and
elks in my mind, it seemed almost an embarrassment of riches to be
had along the shores of Hood Canal. But that didn’t stop me from
dreaming of how I was going to cook that remaining bucket of
shellfish in my backseat.

Coming Next Week

How I cooked up the oysters at home (and a couple things
in-between so you don’t get too shellfish-ed out).

Today, the Kitsap Sun print edition welcomed back a food
section! Years ago, I was a member of the Sun’s features staff, who
wrote and edited home and garden, religion, entertainment as well
as food stories.When the Sun started cutting back, editors made the
tough decision to focus our remaining resources on local news
coverage.

It wasn’t just the Sun, newspapers all over slimmed down their
features sections and pared their feature writing staffs. The
Seattle Times also slimmed it’s features section, relegating food
coverage mostly to an inside page in its local news section. Don’t
get me wrong, I love Nancy Lesson’s column, I just miss seeing big
pictures of food displayed on a page.

Those food displays is one of the reasons I enjoy getting The
News Tribune on Wednesdays. We’re news junkies at our house and get
three papers and regularly read other news sites online. Those
poor, poor trees.

So when I learned that the Sun was bringing back a food page,
well all I could think was, “Whoopee!”

So for those of you who, like me, missed a food section, join me
in welcoming it back. It kicked off with a local
food story from Ann Vogel about several foodie couples who
gather together to create complicated dishes from around the world.
It also has Ann Vogel’s regular
In the Kitchen column, which this week includes a recipe for
Wharf Fish soup.

Ann’s column will be there now every Friday. The food feature
will switch between local and more national food stories, and if I
can finagle it, an occasional appearance by yours truly and other
local food bloggers.

Picture this: a dollop of tartar sauce atop three golden
triangular Dungeness crab cakes. And nestled between those is a
crisp, fin-shape tuile flavored with chili and black bean. And all
of this atop a thin spread of black bean puree and drizzled with a
creamy corn sauce.

The dish, created by 17-year-old Dustin Buchholz, also tastes
pretty good too.
So said a panel of judges from the Washington State Chefs
Association.

Buchholz, who bested a group of college-age culinary students,
was the youngest competitor in the Association’s annual Best of the
Pacific Northwest last month.

Buchholz, a South Kitsap High senior and culinary arts student
at West Sound Technical Skill Center, has been interested in
cooking since taking a course in high school.

Well, that course wasn’t the first kind of cooking he’d done. He
started by making breakfasts with his grandfather.

“We do hashbrowns, eggs, toast and bacon,” a favorite thing to
do, he said. And he claims to be pretty good at it, too.

He now works as a dishwasher and prep cook in the Clubhouse at
McCormick Woods.

Initially, he hadn’t even planned to enter the competition.

But his boss, Clubhouse Executive Chef Bruce Bonholzer, had
regularly pushed Buchholz to push him to learn more and believed
Buchholz could do well in the competition and paid his $35 entry
fee into the student category.

Once entered, Buchholz had to develop a recipe and decide how to
plate it.

“You just kind of make them and start adding different things,”
he said. He toyed with recipes from work, got ideas from his boss
and his skills center instructor and crafted a recipe all his
own.

Aside from taste, the dish has to look good.

“You want it to have a variety of colors and be eye-appealing to
whoever is judging it,” he said.

The morning of the competition, Buchholz and assistant Alex
Radovich went to the skills center, putting together all that they
could of their Mexican-themed dish ahead of the competition.

From there, they took the mostly prepared crab cakes to Le
Cordon Bleu School in Tukwilla, where they breaded, cooked and set
all the parts on glazed, green plates, chosen specially for the
competition. They made extra for other attendees to taste.

Buchholz was confident as he prepared the dish. That was, until
he finished and got a chance to see and taste other students’
dishes.

“I was actually doubting myself toward the end,” he said.

One girl created a layered crab cake that looked almost like a
wedding cake. Others had beautiful tasting dishes and “really neat
flavors.”

But come decision time, the judges loved most of the dish and
suggested he sell the tuile. They didn’t care for the large amount
of tartar sauce, though, and suggested he use more cream of
corn.

He received a first-place plaque and a $350 prize.

For Buchholz, a career in culinary arts may depend less upon
whether this honor can launch it and more upon the U.S. Navy, where
he hopes to follow in his grandfather’s wake.

Some of you may have noticed I was absent last week, and that
would be because I was eating my way through New Orleans and along
the Gulf Coast.

When a restaurant had fresh oysters, we ate Gulf oysters and
they were delicious. They’re milder and relax more on the shell
than their Puget Sound-grown cousins. I tried blackened alligator,
and yes, it tastes a little like chicken.

Since this is technically supposed to be a blog about local
food, I won’t drone on about all the stops we made along the way,
but if you’re interested, here are some of the photos of the food
and sites we saw along the way. If you have any questions, feel
free to ask.

And if any of you know where to get good Cajun/Creole food in
Kitsap, Seattle or Tacoma, I beg you to share!

If you walked past the rows of pickles and peaches, beans, jams
and other canned goods affixed with little blue, red and black
ribbons at the Kitsap County Fair, think of this: How would all of
these cans look in 50 years?

The first image that came to my head was of fruits so
disintegrated they became mere goo and pickles left discolored and
waxy.

Then, after meeting with Kevin Masters, all those images faded
away when he showed me the beans below. Before you scroll too far,
take a guess at how old they are (come on, no cheating,
though there’s no real punishment if you do).

Since I mentioned 50 years earlier, is that what you guessed?
Wrong! Try 81.

Masters’ grandmother, Josephine Cameron (maiden name Kuntz),
grew up in Silverdale in the days when the area was full of farms
and chickens. She used to candle eggs, holding a light behind them
to check for forming chicks. And as many women of her generation
did, she canned.

She canned a variety of things from vegetables grown in her
garden to tuna fish and a plum sauce that “was sweet and tasty and
had a little tang to it,” unlike the oversweetened options in
modern grocery stories, Masters said. That plum sauce was his
favorite. He used to bring emptied jars of preserved food and trade
her for filled ones.

She entered her goods in the Kitsap County Fair for years until
she started judging the contests.

“I guess when you know everything, that’s when you start
judging,” Masters said.

But Kitsap’s wasn’t the only fair she entered.

In 1929 the Western Washington Fair in Puyallup had been going
strong for 29 years. That year, Arabian horses, photographs of New
York and Romanian peasant costumes were among the things to see.
Members of the Wynoochee Valley grange had
carefully arranged fruits and vegetables in tiered rows and in
boxes and set before a fan of gathered grains, on their way to a
first prize grange exhibit.

And Josephine Cameron prepared a can of long, thin green beans,
which she probably grew Masters said. They won a blue ribbon.

Masters wasn’t sure what recipe she used, and any food safety
expert will tell you that as pretty as they still are, they
definitely should not be taste-tested at this point. But even years
after her death – she died in 1993 – when Masters talks about that
jar and his grandmother her memory seemed just as well-preserved as
those green beans.

Masters used to have the beans displayed on a shelf in his home,
with accompanying cans of yellow wax beans and less-colorful
cherries. But he’s since moved them to a more protected place, to
preserve the color.

For all the bakers and all those who got into
canning or other food making recently, and for
those who’ve been doing it all along, your annual chance to show
your off your preserves is coming up.

The deadline for Open Class foods and canning is from 10 a.m. to
6 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 22, which doesn’t give you much time to create
something new if you work a 9 to 5 or 8 to 8. There’s nothing like
a frenzied Saturday, right?

The open class foods is divided into two divisions, preserves,
which include everything from pickled beets to jams and jellies,
and and a baking division for cakes, cookies, breads,
gluten-free goodies and one category called “Kick It Up” for any
baked item depicting the fair’s theme.

The county
has a pdf explaining more about the open class food
entries.

The judging for these will take place from 10 a.m. to 4
p.m. Saturday, Aug. 28 in Presidents’ Hall.

If you’re a pie maker, you’ve got a little more
time. The entry is limited to fruit and berry pies (no
refrigerators = no custards, cream cheese or any whipping cream of
any kind). Your deadline is 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Aug.
28. Take your entry outside the main entrance of the Presidents’
Hall (and if you feel like dropping of an extra the day before at
the Kitsap Sun, I sure wouldn’t mind). Judging is from 11:30 a.m.
to 1 p.m., after which awards will be presented. Unfortunately,
I’ll likely miss the pies again this year while I attend a wedding.
Anyone want to volunteer to be a pie-loving, photo-taking
correspondent?

On Sunday, Aug. 29, they’re again having the
cheesecake contest. Deadline for entry is from
noon to 1 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 29 outside President’s Hall. Juding is
from 1 p.m. To 2 p.m., and awards will be announced at 2:30 p.m.
There’s no entry fee, though you have to buy a ticket to get into
the fair. I. Am. So. There.

The county
has a pdf explaining the rules for pies, chocolates and
cheesecakes.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the blog re-started in time for the
Homebrew beer brewers or homebrew wine makers. You’ll be able to
see the winners, though, on the opening day of the fair.

The fair also offers a variety of meal preparation and other
related food contests. You can find out more about that and the
things I mentioned above on the county’s
web page for fair exhibitions.

A couple weeks ago, I met with a really nice woman, Ann Preston,
after seeing her blog about Kitsap restaurants. And, after our
conversation, she’s agreed to share her reviews on the Kitsap Sun’s
site on the Kitsap Dining blog!
She’s new to the county and she’s been taking a look at the
everyday-style restaurants in Kitsap. I’ve enjoyed reading her
posts, and I hope you will too.

Also on the restaurant front, I’ve been working on adding
restaurants and details to local establishments on our site in our
restaurants guide at kitsapsun.com/restaurants.
With each restaurant, readers have the ability to give it a star
rating and comment.While Yelp and UrbanSpoon offer restaurant
reviews, I know finding places in Kitsap can be a little tough, and
I’m hoping that this will grow to be a solid resource for Kitsap
foodies. t’s a work in progress, and I’ll be adding restaurants to
it in my spare time. Restaurant lovers out there can also share
information about their favorites if you don’t see it on the
list already. Pass the word on to your favorite restauranteur.

And now for the bad news:

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the posts to the Food Life have
become infrequent and at times a little lackluster. This blog was a
side project, most work done in my spare time. I believe the best
blogs are ones created by people passionate about a topic or
community and who can give the blog time, attention and frequently
post. While I may have the passion about food, time, it seems is
something I have precious little of sometimes (you should see the
stock of TV and otherwise frozen dinners we’ve had in the past
couple months).

While I’ve enjoyed talking with many of you either on the
blog or in e-mails, I’m going to have to say goodbye to The Food
Life. Though you won’t be able to find the blog on the main site
anymore, you’ll still be able to access the archives at pugetsoundblogs.com/foodlife.

This, of course, won’t be the last you’ll see of me on the
blogs, nor will it be the last change you see to Kitsap Sun blogs.
Please look for the changes and wish us luck.

And if you or anyone else you know is interested in writing
about food, our bloggers would welcome the company. I’m hoping some
of those aspiring chefs out there want to share their killer
recipes.